iFLAG

I love open source and DIY projects and and this is an extremely lovely one. Who doesn’t like blinking and colorful lights?

Petr Vostrel created a very handy marshaling software using Arduino and LED matrix to help to identify visually some situations in iRacing.

“Open source race marshalling light board for iRacing.com simulation. LED matrix displays racing flags in a truly noticable peripheral vision fashion making it literally impossible to miss any flag like yellow, blue or safetycar flags. Additionaly includes optional useful signals like start lights on the grid and more.”

iFlag is open and free and you’d only need to purchase hardware to make it run in your PC.

There is a large description about signals are available right now in the software. You can check it here.

You just need to purchase 3 hardware items to get a basic iFlag device:

• Arduino UNO board or any 100% UNO compatible clone
• Colors Shield by Itead
• 60mm 8×8 LED Matrix by Itead

Arduino board can be acquired usually in your local country retailers. Matrix LED and shield are always in stock from Itead webshop.

“iFlag software translates provides the interconnection of iRacing and the matrix. It continuously listens for iRacing session and other signals, processes them and issues commands telling the device exactly what to display
on the LED matrix.

So far iFlag doesn’t come with any installer, it is only an EXE you run. This means that you need to provide certain prerequisities yourself. Namely have this installed on your computer:

• .NET Framework 4 – get it for free from Microsoft.
• Arduino IDE (only for drivers) – get it for free from Arduino.

Copy the software/iFlag folder to anywhere you like on your harddrive, except Program Files folder(s), and run it from there. It is useful to make a shortcut in Startup items to have iFlag ready as soon as you start the computer.

Run iFlag.exe and connect the USB hardware. Order doesn’t matter.”

Thanks to Petr Vostrel for this gift to the iRacing community. You can find enclosures, retailers data, installation, setup and mounting instructions in the forum thread here.